


I Make No Apologies

by titC



Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Gen, Mind Games, mind trap, “They’re Back; Aren’t They” Fic Exchange
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-10
Updated: 2018-09-10
Packaged: 2019-07-10 14:44:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15951500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/titC/pseuds/titC
Summary: Cain character piece... maybe ;-)





	I Make No Apologies

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Wolfgirl4vr](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wolfgirl4vr/gifts).



> Written for the _"They're Back; Aren't They" Fic Exchange_ for [Wolfgirl4vr](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wolfgirl4vr/pseuds/Wolfgirl4vr).  
>  Your prompt was [Imagine Dragons – Whatever it Takes](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOsM-DYAEhY) with a side order of Marcus-Cain, and the [lyrics](http://www.metrolyrics.com/whatever-it-takes-lyrics-imagine-dragons.html) led me here... i hope you like it!  
> i felt Cain was a fascinating and complex character (although not a _nice_ one ;-) last season, and i enjoyed writing about him!

There was a slight breeze, just enough to cool him down and dry the sweat from his brow. Cain looked down at his brother’s body. Finally, he thought. Finally, Abel was silenced. Ever since he’d been born, he’d taken everything – the affection, the admiration, the praise, the women. Abel hadn’t been into men, so there was that. Wheat and corn and men: all that he could have, only because Abel hadn’t wanted them.

Now his smug face was caved in and at last, for the first time since he’d heard the wails of the baby that their mother had just given birth too, he wasn’t the second best. The second choice. 

“At first,” their parents would tell them around a fire, “we were on our own. Then, there were other people, and we wandered together; then we settled. And then, you two came into this world, and we were very happy.” _I wasn’t_ , Cain remembered. _But now, I am_.

“Abel? Abel, where are you?” It was their mother. “Have you finished – oh. Oh!” She pushed Cain aside and hurried to her second son, who’d become first in her eyes. “What happened? Son, what happened?” Then, her eyes fell on the rock still in his hand, and he saw understanding in her eyes.

They knew what death was; they’d killed and eaten sheep for a long time now, and they’d killed the beasts that wanted to eat their sheep too. No human had ever died before, but Mother – she was smart, and she understood Abel would never stand up again. She understood the vultures circling high above and the flies already gathering on Abel’s face. He’d never again bring her soft sheep’s skin to wear and rich sheep’s milk to drink. He’d never again bring another woman around or eat her bread again because he claimed hers was better than his wives’.

This brought Cain joy, but he could now see it in her eyes – it cost him his mother. Well, she’d never liked him after Abel’s birth, had she? And so he shrugged, and kept the bloody stone in his hand, and walked away. No one followed him, and it was the first time he was alone. 

At first, he liked it.

 

A few days after Abel’s death, he woke up and his arm was burning and he couldn’t move, and a voice said: “Cain. For what you did, you shall be punished. And because you stole life, your death will be taken from you, so you will never know peace and rest. Let this be your curse. So it shall be, for God wills it.” 

He opened his eyes, but whoever it was had already left. The burning in his arm lessened to a dull throb, and when he looked at it he saw it had left a circle. It didn’t feel like much of a punishment. 

As time went by, he found other settlements, other peoples in the world. He also found out he couldn’t farm anymore and that all his crops died, and every time it happened he left. _You’ll bring a blight on our harvests_ , they’d say. _We’ll starve if you don’t go away_ , they’d say. Usually, they’d never imagined killing another human being, and so he simply packed his things – the rock he killed Abel with, a stone knife, an animal hide to cover himself in colder lands – and walked away. Sometimes, there were women, children, he walked away from; but he never took them with him. He left at night, without warning, without regret.

Not after the first few times, at any rate.

He took up other skills, discovered weaving and metalworking and pottery. He stayed longer, then. Sometimes he even saw his children’s children; but then they all realized he didn’t age and he didn’t die, and so again – he left.

Until one day, sitting under a tree, he found a man with strange clothes made out a very fine, colorful, soft weave. The man waved at him, and – why not, he thought. He was good-looking, and he hadn’t been with a man in a long time. Maybe it would be a welcome distraction from the boring routine of his life.

“Hello, Cain.”

_Cain_? He stopped in front of the man’s shiny footwear. “How do you know that name?”

“It’s your name, isn’t it?”

“It used to be. I haven’t used it in… a while.”

“What are you called, at this point in time? Oh, well, no matter. Don’t you realize where you are? When you are?” What was the stranger on about? “Tell me, Cain. Doesn’t any of this give you a sense of déjà-vu?”

“What, walking?”

“Tut tut. You’ve got your mum’s smarts, use them.” He stuck a hand in his clothing, and took a sort of… gourd? out. “Want some?”

He snatched it from the man’s hand and drank. He coughed, and remembered. 

“Fuck you, Lucifer.”

“Been there, done that.”

“So this is hell?”

“Your own private hell, yes. Boredom, boredom, boredom, to start with.”

“So why come now, so early in my second life?”

“To remind you it _is_ your second life and that you can’t escape it, of course.”

“And you know all about not being able to escape, right?” He waved at his face. “How’s LA? Or have you left?” He couldn’t have stayed on Earth looking like he had there at the end, even if it seemed in hell he could control his appearance. 

“Same old same old. Still polluted, still sunny, still too much traffic.”

“And how’s Chl– ” 

“Nothing much has changed. It’s not been long, there.” Testy, huh. 

So as soon as he found a way to escape, he could take things up right where he’d left them. His backup plans, his stashes of money… it would still be right where he’d left them. Good. “And how’s hell for you these days, Lucifer? Now you’ve killed a human, I mean. After killing your own brother.”

“I’m not stuck here by my own guilt, Cain.”

“Guilt? What guilt? I’m here because you sent me here, not because I deserve it. This isn't my rightful place.”

Lucifer’s slow grin was unsettling, but Cain refused to show it and look away from that bastard’s face until he blinked out. Back to his throne or wherever he spent his days, now. He was pretty sure he couldn’t have stayed topside after his own guilt had burned his human face away, right? The thought warmed him up for a long while after that as he plotted his escape, now that he knew the truth.

 

Getting out of a cell? He’d done it countless times. But getting out of a cell that was vast as the world, with no door and no walls? No warden that he could see and bribe, no way out because there was no way in… and yet there must be. Why had he ended up here anyway? He didn’t feel guilty for anything. The people he’d killed – well, they’d all have died sooner or later. He’d spared them senescence, a long dragged-out agony, all the things that ended their gnat-like lives. 

It was not like Charlotte would have _enjoyed_ old age, was it? Sure, he hadn’t wanted her dead, but what difference did it make? She’d been on borrowed time anyway, so: not much.

Cain readjusted his pack and walked on, straight ahead. He didn’t let anything distract him from his course; it was all onwards in a straight line. Climbing, swimming, boating; checking his path in the stars and hoping he remembered the old ways well enough. Of course it was probably a wild stab in the dark, but he had to try and make sure that there was no wall, there was no door. Then he’d start on another plan, and another, and another, until one worked.

 

No plan worked. The world had no end, horizontally or vertically. He’d gone as far as he could in all directions, and there was no wall anywhere. He’d tried every door he’d found in his travels, and they were all perfectly ordinary doors (a few guards hadn’t liked him opening some, but they couldn’t permanently stop him, could they). Maybe he could try mental exercises to try and feel guilty or at least pretend he did so a door would appear to taunt him some more?

He was pretty sure Lucifer would appear again because the bastard couldn’t resist a good boast, but what leverage did he have over him? How could he get him to reveal a way out, or trick the devil into freeing Cain?

He laid down under a palm tree and closed his eyes. He’d get an idea, sooner or later.

 

“Hello, murderer!” And here he was, with his ridiculous hair and his ridiculous peacocky clothes and that self-satisfied grin he wanted to punch in.

“What do you want.”

“Why, can’t a good king see to his kingdom?”

“So you’re back for good then?”

“Extrapolating, Cain-ie dear.” He looked around. “You know you’re in hell, and yet you’re living through all of human history again. Is that your plan? Are you trying to see what you could change, like one giant experiment? Or is it just apathy? One wonders.”

“Wonder all you want.”

“Fine, fine. Be grumpy, I don’t care. I thought I should let you know about the fate of your organization, though. Oh, and of your body.”

His body? What did Lucifer mean, his body? He could feel ice in his veins right now, was _this_ not his body? “What about it?”

“Well, it’s been absolutely dismembered. Every cell, torn apart. The LAPD got a lot of intel before that, too: your right hand was very informative, or so I’ve heard. Ms Lopez made it a point of honor to find all that was possible to find, everywhere. The tiniest hair, the most insignificant mole was analyzed.” Cain felt both frozen and incensed, rage and something else warring in him. “I am talking of your criminal endeavors, of course. As for your remains… they’re ash in a potter’s field, now.”

He swallowed. “Ash?”

“Well. You may only be human, but you lived long enough to pick up a few things. Better not leave a body for you to return to, right?”

Cain cleared his throat. “In case I escape?”

“Oh, you will try. You have tried, and will try again. And as you know, sometimes, one does get their wish; but at the wrong time. In the wrong shape.” He laughed, the bastard. “Well, when I say shape… not like you have any to return to, eh?” A door, an actual fucking door materialized out of thin air. It seemed to be floating there, attached to nothing, and yet it opened to a dark corridor when Lucifer turned the handle. “Well, can’t say it’s been a pleasure, right? So, sayonara, Sinnerman.”

Cain’s jaw was shut so tight he couldn’t even send him off with a fuck you. Lucifer had left the door ajar and it was still there, taunting him with promise. He took a step, then another. Put his hand on the wood – was it still his hand, if this wasn’t his body? No, better not think about that. It was only a problem to solve later.

He tried to push it open. He couldn’t. He pushed harder, and harder, and harder until finally he fell forward and. And.

His arm had gone through the door, and he could see his fingertips brushing the grass in front of him. He couldn’t push the door open. It wasn’t a door, for him. He couldn’t go beyond it, into the corridor. He couldn’t – he’d always end up here. He couldn’t escape, and he had nowhere to escape to – not even as a ghost back on earth. He was stuck here, sentenced to relive again and again the crushing boredom that he’d endured for centuries, for millennia; knowing that he’d been the one to show mankind the way to agriculture and pottery and metalworking and also jealousy, crime and murder. It was all on him. 

He screamed. 


End file.
